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TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

Edward Kennard Rand 



(Phi Beta Kappa Address at Stanford University, June 19, 1920 
Reprinted from the Chapter Proceedings) 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

Edward Kennard Rand 



(Phi Beta Kappa Address at Stanford University, June ig, 1920 
Reprinted from the Chapter Proceeding-s) 



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am 

SEP X 4= 1925 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

Edward Kennard Rand 

The periods of human history, though clearly defined in 
their intellectual tendencies and temperamental traits as we 
look back over the past, generally merge their boundary 
lines. As in the natural world, it is hard to tell where one 
species of civilization ends and another begins. Who can 
put his finger on the precise moment when the Middle Ages 
started their course, and when they gave place to the 
Renaissance ? Still less could the dwellers in those ages dis- 
cern the transition from one period into another. No bell 
rang to apprise them of the passing of the old and the in- 
coming of the new. They were not even aware of their 
characteristic colorings. Men of the Middle Ages did not 
know that they were "middle." They coined the word 
modernus and were doubtless impressed, first of all, with 
the sense of their own modernity. They had their moments 
of conscious pride in contemporary achievement, or they 
lamented the vanished virtues of a distant Golden Age, or 
they cherished rosy dreams of a coming millenium, as has 
ever been done since time began. The ages glide on from 
year to year unaware of their nature, which does not stand 
out till later generations see it in perspective, as part of the 
general vista of time. 

Yet there are cataclysms in history as in nature, sudden 
and decisive events that cut like a knife across our steady 
development or our slow decline, and mark it into periods. 
On August 1, 1914, we knew not merely that a European 
war was on, but that a great betrayal of our human trust 
had taken place, that a powerful nation, blinded with its 
own importance, had broken its pledges, attacked its neigh- 
bors and proclaimed the appointed day when its victorious 
troops should dictate German culture to the world. That 
was, indeed, a new epoch. From the universal turmoil into 
which the nations, one by one, were drawn, we looked back 



4 TW^AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

on the preceding decades as on another world. We found 
consolation in the thought that though the night was black 
with a barbaric war and the yet more awful fear of a bar- 
baric peace, it had been our fortune once upon a time to 
live in a Golden Age. For all that, when our own national 
duty called at last in a voice without reply and we rose to 
the call as one man, when self-denial and simplicity of living 
were normal and all our acts were harmonized by a righteous 
purpose and a firm resolve, those were the days that we 
called another Golden Age and again thanked our stars that 
we had been vouchsafed that great experience. On thai 
period, brief but large, we may now look back, with longing 
and with bitterness of soul. For its heroism, its unity, its 
glimpse of a not too distant goal, have passed. In their place 
are selfish dissensions, unstrung morale and the apparent 
defeat of a great political hope. It is a moment of profound 
disenchantment. 

If the immediate present is black with discouragement, 
the members of this illustrious society of Phi Beta Kappa, 
who are embarked on that voyage whose pilot is philosophy, 
will best find consolation by a survey of the past and a new 
analysis of our hopes on the basis of what in similar periods 
of history, man has struggled to attain and partly lost and 
partly found. We will lift up our eyes to the ancestral hills, 
for thence cometh our help. And in particular. I will invite 
you to look back this afternoon on the years that followed 
the American Revolution, to see if they contain some cheer- 
ing reflection, or even some prophecy of the ultimate lifting 
of the clouds of our present dismay. We will take this 
earlier retrospect in the company of several contemporary 
observers of those times. The first is a writer not known by 
name, whose work, entitled "An Historical Journal of the 
American War," was published in the Massachusetts His- 
torical Collections for the year 1793. This account, declare 
the editors, was prepared "by a gentleman of information 
and judgment." It is not, of course, a complete history of 
the Revolutionary War ; contemporary accounts cannot be 
complete. But they have the unique value of letting us feel 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 



the pulse of the times. It is worth our while to note the 
temper of an intelligent and cultivated citizen, writing, ten 
years after peace had been declared, a summary of the 
mighty struggle of which he had been an eye-witness. 

There are many passages in this record that mutatis mu- 
tandis might have been written during our recent war. 
There is the conviction throughout that the cause of the 
colonies is unquestionably just. There is the same detesta- 
tion of a foe who does not shrink from ungentlemanly 
warfare and the systematic resort to S chrecklichkeiten, of 
which most, it seems, were the work of Indian savages and 
Hessian hirelings. Says Governor Livingston of the con- 
duct of the royal forces in New Jersey, where the Hessians 
were active : "They have plundered friends and foes ; effects 
capable of division, they have divided ; such as were not, 
they have destroyed ; they have warred upon decrepid old 
age, warred upon defenseless youth ; they have committed 
hostilities against the professors of literature, and the min- 
isters of religion, against publick records and private monu- 
ments, books of improvements and papers of curiosity; and 
against the arts and sciences. They have butchered the 
wounded asking for quarter, mangled the dead weltering in 
their blood, refused to the dead the rites of sepulchre, suf- 
fered prisoners to perish for want of sustenance ; violated 
the chastity of women, disfigured private dwellings of taste 
and elegance ; and in the rag'e of impiety and barbarism, 
profaned edifices dedicated to Almighty God." I could 
multiply repulsive stories of outrages that would remind 
you of the reports — some true, some false — that spread with 
the invasion of Belgium. The efifects of war, as General 
Sherman intimated, are not pleasant. One party would 
have it that the most terrible war is the most humane, be- 
cause the shortest. But our ancestors believed rather that 
the awful game has its rules and that gentlemen should mind 
them. 

What we have learned to call propaganda, the attack on 
the psychology of a people, an art which Germany in the 
recent war developed with scientific elaboration and applied 



T\Va■^MERICAN RETROSPECTS 



with childish stupidity, was, of course, in its infancy in 
the days of our ancestors. Lord Howe tried at the outset 
to hold out the iiuhicenicnt of pardon to any who laid down 
arms, but few sought this dubious shelter. One dastardly 
move was the attempt on the part of the British to ruin the 
Continental currency, already in a pitiable condition, by the 
manufacture of counterfeit money. A final effort was made 
at the close of the war to induce the States to conclude a 
separate peace apart from their ally France; but they re- 
mained loyal to their trust. 

Within our forces, there were the usual bickerings and 
dissensions. Poor humanity cannot work, it would seem, in 
any other way. I often thought during the war that if the 
animosities engendered in patriotic committees of good men 
and women could only be concentrated on the front, the 
Boche would not long have held out. Nor was the Conti- 
nental Army altogether a unit. General Washington was 
embarrassed with petty criticisms, omniscient suggestions, 
and the jealousies of officers associated with him in com- 
mand. 

There were pacifists in those days, too. "Congress," 
says our author, "were apprehensive that the royal army 
would pay a visit to Philadelphia, and taking into considera- 
tion the religious tenets of a great many of the inhabitants 
denominated Quakers, which would not allow of their taking 
up arms, and which had been a great clog to the military 
operations of the Pennsylvanians — they judged it proper to 
lay before the people the hazard that would attend the suc- 
cess of the enemy, and getting into their capital ; for this 
purpose Congress ordered handbills to be struck off" — like 
our posters — "and circulated through the State, to rouse 
them to a sense of their danger, and the defense of their 
property, and to convince the Continent that one spirit 
actuated the whole.''' "The address," he adds, "had a good 
effect in the Southern States ; they were excited to more 
vigorous exertions." 

With the issuing of paper money the condition of the 
currency became desperate, and the attempt was made to 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 



finance the war mainly by loans. Our ancestors patriotically 
went deep into their pockets and gave till it hurt. There 
came a time, in 1779, when the desperate policy of repudiat- 
ing the public debt was suggested, and Congress made the 
following reply: "The pride of America revolts from the 
idea of violating the publick faith; her citizens know for 
what purpose these emissions were made; have repeatedly 
plighted their faith for the redemption of them ; they are to 
be found in every man's possession, and every man is inter- 
ested in their being redeemed;" — this bespeaks a wide sub- 
scription to those first Liberty bonds! The result of this 
new appeal was that hands went down still deeper into 
pockets and the giving hurt once more. The splendid self- 
denials of the American people during the recent war were 
not without precedent. One money-raising device, tried by 
our ancestors but not, so far as I know, by us, was a lottery. 
This consisted of four classes, of one hundred thousand 
tickets, each subject to a deduction at fifteen per cent — at 
the price of from ten to forty dollars in the several classes. 
The highest prizes were from ten to fifty thousand dollars, 
and there was not one blank to a prize. The fortunate ad- 
venturers, who should draw more than thirty or forty dol- 
lars, in the first, second, and third classes, were to receive a 
treasury banknote, payable at the end of five years, and an 
annual interest of four per cent ; the drawers of fifty dollars 
in the fourth class to receive their money immediately. 
Thus was the subscription to a Liberty Loan combined with 
a little excitement, involving perhaps a substantial profit, 
or perhaps a little loss. 

Do not imagine that our Hostess Houses and other forms 
of War Camp Community Service are altogether a recent 
discovery. The same spirit was manifested, if not in quite 
the same way, by the ladies of the Revolution. The move- 
ment started in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. 
"Some ladies of Philadelphia," our author writes, "set an 
example to others of their sex, of love to their country, and 
compassion to their sufiFering brethren among themselves, 
and stimulating others to do it, for the purpose of aflfording 



8 TWOiRMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

a temporary relief for the troops on service in that vicinity, 
who were destitute of many necessaries. They were suc- 
cessful in their labours of love, and bestowed on the soldiers 
their free-will offerings. These are such expressions of 
kindness and delicate sensations, as ought to be recorded to 
the honour of the American ladies. It is a pleasing pros- 
pect, 'When the men are valiant, and the women kind.' " 
Oiu' soldiers and sailors, as valiant as of yore, will agree 
that the kindly American women are still true to type. 

But I turn to a gloomier side of this contemporary retro- 
spect. You must not be surprised if the profiteer was flour- 
ishing like the green bay tree in those days, or if a familiar 
remedy was suggested to circumvent him. In 1778, our 
author states, "the prevalence of monopoly, and extortion, 
had called the attention of Congress to devise means that had 
the most probable tendency to suppress those growing evils, 
and being of opinion that regulating lazvs ivere absolutely 
necessary, they divided the thirteen United States into two 
districts, and recommended to their respective legislatures 
to appoint a convention to establish a regulation of prices. 

"The Eastern districts, New England, complied with the 
recommendation. A convention met at New Haven 
(Connect.) and formed a plan of regulation; laid it before 
the legislatures of their respective States ; and it being ap- 
proved by them, was put into practice by almost all the 
States, excepting the Massachusetts. A writer says, 'The 
Recusants of that State prevented its universal execution.' " 
But despite our author's censure, many economists today 
would agree that "the Massachusetts" should be thanked and 
not censured for delivering the country from a wholesale 
policy of price-regulation. 

Harder to bear than grinding poverty, rising taxes and 
the general disturbance of finance, was the looming cloud of 
apprehension as to the outcome of it all. What could be in 
store for the tiny Continental army, when once the British 
plans were matured and their full force in operation, but 
defeat? There are some elements in the early strategy of 
the war that remind us of the events of the summer of 1914. 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 



It began with a bold but unsuccessful dash on Canada, with 
the idea of uniting- all American possessions of the Crown 
against the home government. We may compare the gallant 
and almost inevitable, but strategically unsound, advance of 
the French into Alsace in the first month of the recent war. 
The plan adopted by General Washington, as by General 
Jofi're, and by General Fabius before their time, was one 
detestable to Congressmen and arm-chair strategists, but 
justified by the results. Washington saw that he was no 
match for the British in the field, but that by keeping his 
army intact and waiting for accessions from the militia that 
had begun to train, he put the hour of a British victory 
farther and farther ofif. He had nothing to lose and every- 
thing to gain by waiting; so he waited, and gained every- 
thing. But in those long months in which he faced Howe 
on Long Island, then drew his troops away, gave up New 
York, slowly retreated through New Jersey, crossed the 
Delaware to the dismal winter camp at Valley Forge, while 
Congress, like the French Government in the early stages 
of the war, changed its abode to a safer city — in those long 
months, our ancestors knew an anxiety not less intense, and 
certainly more protracted, even than our own when the hosts 
of the greatest military organization of our times poured into 
defenseless Belgium and surged, apparently irresistible, over 
the fields of France. Except for Washington's brilliant 
dash from his covert and his rout of the Hessian troops at 
Trenton, nothing occurred for over fifteen months after 
Howe's landing on Long Island to interrupt the steadily 
accumulating apprehension of the final stroke of defeat — 
"nearer and nearer, though not yet." That was the con- 
trolling mood till the grandiose plan of Burgoyne ended 
with his surrender on October 17, 1777. Then, and not till 
then, could they cry, as we did after the Germans fled from 
Paris in the first battle of the Marne, "They're held !" And 
then and not till then could any x\merican patriot have felt 
in his heart, "It is only a matter of time." For the alliance 
with France was now assured. Our country splendidly 
helped history to repeat itself, when in the summer of 1918 



10 TWO#t^IERICAN RETROSPECTS 

our boys did their part in staying the last and well-nigh 
successful advance of the foe, and, what is more, brought 
home to them at last our actual presence in the fight, backed 
by free-flowing resources, fresh strength, and a nation's 
steadfast will. From that moment, it was only a matter of 
time. We had paid our ancient debt to France. But the 
debt to our late allies, England and France and Italy, who 
had stemmed the tide while we were pondering, who had 
poured out their blood for civilization and for us, we have 
not begun to pay. 

At the very darkest moment of the war, when Burgoyne 
was marching on after his initial victories, the courage of 
Washington shone brightest ; then was his faith in the 
triumph of the righteous cause most strong. It was the 
same flame of heroism that leaped up in English hearts when 
its first hundred thousand were shot to pieces in the great 
retreat, the same that fired the will of France when the foe 
did not pass at Verdun, and the same that roused Italy to her 
true self when all seemed lost at Caporetto. 

"Of wounds and sore defeat, 

I made by battle-stay, 
Winged sandals for my feet 

I wove of my delay ; 
Of weariness and fear, 
I made my shouting spear ; 
Of loss, and doubt and dread 

And swift oncoming doom 
I made a helmet for my head 

And a floating plume. 
From the shutting mist of death, 
From the failure of the breath, 

I made a battle-horn to blow 

Across the vales of overthrow. 
Oh, hearken, love, the battle-horn, 

The triumph clear, the silver scorn ! 
Oh, hearken, where its echoes bring 

Down the gray disastrous morn 
Laughter and rallying." 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS U 

Washington, in answer to the vainglorious proclamation of 
Burgoyne, pubUshed a manifesto to his troops which, as our 
author quotes it, began : 

"The associated armies of America act from the noblest 
motives, and for the purest purposes ; their common object 
is liberty. The same principles actuated the arms of Rome 
in the days of her glory, and the same object was the reward 
of Roman valour. When these sacred ideas are profaned, 
when the abominable mixture of mercenary, foreign, and 
savage forces dares to mention the love of country, and the 
general privileges of mankind, the freemen of America pro- 
test against such abuse of language and prostitution of 
sentiment. Harassed as we are by unrelenting persecution, 
obliged by every tie to repel violence by force, we appeal to 
the hearts of all mankind for the justice of our cause; its 
event we submit to him who speaks the fate of nations, in 
humble confidence, that as his omniscient eye taketh note 
even of the sparrow that falleth to the ground, so he will 
not withdraw his countenance from a people who humbly 
array themselves under his banner, in defence of the noblest 
principles with which he hath adorned humanity." 

Did not our forefathers look back on the moment of 
that brave utterance, yes, on the whole period of the war, 
as to a Golden Age, when after the declaration of peace in 
1783 a time of disillusion and despondency succeeded, a 
time most like to that in which we find ourselves just now? 
Peace had by no means brought with it either the general 
welfare of mankind or that of the States. The dangers of 
demobilization and of dissensions Between the military and 
Congress were minimized by the wonderful tact of Wash- 
ington. But other evils were rampant. Our own feeling of 
lassitude and frustration is not more intense than the nationaJ 
torpor of those days. 

"Now sinks the public mind ; a deathlike sleep 

O'er all the torpid limbs begins to creep ; . 

By dull degrees decays the vital heat. 

The blood forgets to flow, the pulse to beat ; 



12 TWO^IERICAN RETROSPECTS 

Exposed in state, to wait the funeral hour, 

Lie tlie pale relics of departed power ; 

While, conscience harrowing up their souls with dread, 

Their ghost of empire stalks without a head." 

These lines are from a contemporary poem which, as you 
will see, will greatly help us in our retrospect. It was written 
three years after the conclusion of peace. 

Financial distress had not been alleviated by peace. Many 
men of wealth had been impoverished, and the profiteers had 
risen to their places. Rich and poor, united in the common 
cause during the war. drifted farther and farther apart. 
Luxury throve ; for, as at the present day. it was sedulously 
cultivated by those who had not known it before. The reck- 
less issuing of paper money increased speculation, divided 
debtors and creditors into hostile camps, and led to riots and 
organized plunder. A writer in a newspaper of the year 1786 
remarks that the "friends of paper money may be reduced 
to the following classes: 1st, debtors; 2d, speculators; 3d, 
brokers; while its enemies are all honest lawyers, doctors, 
parsons, merchants, and farmers." In another paper we 
read : "The period of the late war was considered as the 
paper age of this country. We were told that it was to be 
succeeded by a golden one, after the peace. But, alas ! peace 
is arrived, and the paper age — still remains." 

No colony suffered more from these evils, self-imposed, 
than Rhode Island, or, as it was not infrequently called, 
"Rogues' Island." 

"Hail ! realm of rogues, renown'd for fraud and guile. 

All hail ! ye knavVies of yon little isle. 

There prowls the rascal, cloth'd with legal pow'r, 

To snare the orphan, and the poor devour ; 

The crafty knave his creditor besets, 

And advertising paper pays his debts ; 



The wiser race, the snares of law to shun, 
Like Lot of Sodom, from Rhode Island run." 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 13 

I will reveal the identity of our poet in a moment, merely 
remarking now that he is not an inhabitant of Rhode Island. 

General distress makes good soil for Bolshevism, and it 
throve in the years succeeding the war. By Bolshevism, I 
mean a social upheaval prompted mainly by a normal human 
desire to get something to eat ; this is at least a good work- 
ing definition of applied Bolshevism. In 1786, Captain 
Daniel Shays, a veteran of Bunker Hill, led such a move- 
ment in western Massachusetts. The urging motives were 
scarcity of money, business stagnation, heavy taxes, crushing 
debts, crazy financial schemes on the part of the State, and 
the feeling that the country had not treated its old soldiers 
with gratitude — precisely the motives that have driven the 
peasants over to the Reds in Russia today. Under the leader- 
ship of Shays, a mob closed the courts and prevented the col- 
lection of debts. One of the insurgents mounted a box and 
cried, "My boys, you are going to fight for liberty. If you 
wish to know what liberty is, I will tell you. It is for every 
man to do what he pleases, to make other folks do as you 
please to have them, and to keep folks from serving the 
devil." Save for the last clause, no orthodox Bolshevist 
could define his creed more nicely. 

Shays' rebellion lasted over half a year and engaged the 
serious attention of Congress as well as of the State. Fully 
a third of the population of Massachusetts sympathized with 
the insurgents, and expressed their feelings when it came 
to the next elections ; Governor Bowdoin, who had exerted 
every energy to suppress the revolt, was dropped from office. 
Our poet has some energetic lines on the unhappy episode, 
winding up with a postscript in prose in which he asks Mas- 
sachusetts papers please to copy, or to quote his more stately 
language exactly, "The several printers in Massachusetts 
are requested to republish this, for the benefit of their 
kind customers." He appeals to Beelzebub to come over and 
help his faithful friends in our Macedonia (perhaps you can 
guess where that was), since his affairs are in so thriving a 
posture in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In similar vein, 
a correspondent of the magazine in which our poet's work 



14 TWO^IMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

appeared — I will name them both in a moment — proposed 
that the legislature pass a resolution in favor of one Peter 
Blacklegs and his associates, that they be exonerated from 
all their debts, and that "to the end that no subject of the 
State may hereafter be tempted to accumulate more wealth 
than his neighbor, be it further enacted, That when any 
subject of this State shall be suspected to have become rich 
by industry, frugality, and economy, twelve of his nearest 
neighbors shall assemble, and divide among them such over- 
plus wealth as they may find he possesses. Provided, always, 
that the said twelve nearest neighbors are men who spend 
at least three days in the week at some tavern, and their 
expenses for distilled spirits have been for the last six 
months (next immediately preceding their being so called 
to sit as judges) equal to all their family expenses." 

Finally I will quote from a letter sent by a gentleman in 
New York to a friend in Philadelphia, in 1786. The paper 
money bill, he declares, is an "inducement for people to re- 
fuse paying their debts, which many imagine was not alto- 
gether necessary. This operates as a general obstruction to 
business, which will not only prevent people fatiguing them- 
selves too much, but will liberalize men's notions of prop- 
erty, and, in time, may bring back the apostolic practice of 
having all things in common. It will also take off our hearts 
and lessen our affections for this transitory world, the fash- 
ion whereof changeth ; and further, verifies the proverb, that 
'riches take to themselves wings and flee away,' and shows 
the particular pertinence of the wise man's question 'What 
good hath a man of all the labor wherewith he laboreth 
under the sun ?' " 

I make these many quotations to show first that our 
ancestors were perfectly familiar with a range of economic 
and political ideas that are proclaimed today as the last 
word of emancipated thought, and, more important still, that 
they knew how to treat such fallacies with penetrating 
Horatian satire, all the more effective because urbane. Open 
revolt, like that of the misguided Shays, they suppressed with 
a strong hand. But they would not have expelled from a 



TWO A MERICAN RETROSPECTS 15 

state or the national legislature regularly elected members, 
however radical their views. They did not try to assassinate 
a situation. Argument and Horatian satire were their instru- 
ments for humbling greedy politics masked with democratic 
zeal. Our poet celebrates a certain demagogue of the day 
under the name of William Wimble. He describes, some- 
what prematurely, the hanging of this worthy, and gives 
what purports to be an elegy by his friend Tweedle, the poet 
laureate. It is entitled "An Elegy on a Patriot, occasioned 
by the awful and untimely Death of the Honorable William 
Wimble, who, by the coroner's inquest, was found to have 
come to his end by suffocation." Here is the picture of a 
true politician : 

"To fellow-creatures he was kind, 

To brethren, staunch and hearty ; 
He help'd the zveak, and led the blind, 

Whene'er he led his party. 

He shone in many an office fair, 

By honorable seeking; 
The Army, Church, and State, his care, 

A Delegate and Deacon. 

Adman, of Congress, asked thus: 

'How comes it. Poet Timbrel! 
Your State doth send a fool to us. 

Whose name is William Wimble?' 

The poet did this speech relate : 

'From honest views we sent him; 
The fools are many in our State — 

He goes to represent 'em.' " 

But besides the popular movements from below, the 
danger of political reaction was imminent, as it is in Ger- 
many at this moment. There was even a plan, favored by 
no less a person than Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts, 
President of Congress, to sound Prince Henry of Prussia, 



16 TW^^MERICAN RETROSPECTS 



I^^ 



brother of Frederick the Great, as to his willingness to 
ascend the new American throne ; from Patrick Henry to 
Prince Henry had, indeed, been a far cry. Our poet, in 
scathing lines, proposes the establishment of a monarchy as 
meet punishment for the failure of the states to eflfect a 
soundly democratic union. For the states showed little dis- 
position to fund their disagreements in a common policy. As 
with us at the present moment, the bond of supreme self- 
interest that had held the allied communities together dur- 
ing the war had snapped, and individual desires and sus- 
picions became the more intense by contrast with the unity 
that had prevailed. Several states passed petty tariff, or 
octroi, laws at the expense of their neighbors. New York 
laid a heavy duty on butter, cheese, and garden vegetables 
coming from New Jersey, and on firewood from Connecti- 
cut. The paper currency had caused enormous differences 
in the rates of exchange and state credits. A report pub- 
lished in August, 1786, states that in Pennsylvania paper 
money was at ten per cent discount, in New Jersey at fifteen, 
in North Carolina at fifty, and in "Rogues' " Island at five 
hundred. The wiser states, like Connecticut and Pennsyl- 
vania, thus profited at the expense of their neighbors, who 
were roused to resentment rather than imitation. Maine 
thought seriously of forming an independent commonwealth 
in 1786, when Massachusetts was in the stress of revolution. 
Bickerings and petty jealousies were rife. Lewis Morris, 
father of Gouverneur Morris, the writer of the Constitution, 
drew up a will in which he "charges his executor to give his 
son the best education that is to be had in England or 
America, outside of Connecticut. The lad must never be 
sent to that colony, lest he imbibe in his youth 'that lowe 
craft and cunning so incident to the people of that country" 
which no art could disguise, although 'many of them under 
the sanctified garb of religion have endeavored to impose 
themselves on the world as honest men.' " 

In short, the sacred fires of a united patriotism were 
spent. The whole sacrifice of the war was void. Those who 
had fought for their country were robbed of motive. 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 17 

"This hateful truth still aggravates their pain, 
In vain they conquer'd! and they bled in vain!" 

The vision of independence, justice, and unity that had 
brightened the darkest days of the war seemed irretrievably 
to have vanished. 

"Yet what the hope? The dreams of Congress fade, 

The Federal Union sinks in endless shade ; 

Each feeble call, that warns the realms around. 

Seems the faint echo of a dying sound ; 

Each requisition wastes in fleeting air, 

And not one State regards the powerless prayer." 

Not much chance for a League of these tiny but most indi- 
vidualistic nations, when, as Senator Lodge puts it, the pre- 
vailing sentiment was a "miserable indifference to all things 
national," or, in the succinct language of our poet, it was 
the "fiends' millenial year." 

I will now disclose the source whence I have drawn so 
many verses. It is a poem for which Yale College should 
be given the chief credit, as its composers were all graduates 
of Yale. They lived in Hartford, and were known as the 
Hartford wits ; David Humphreys, Joel Barlow, John Trum- 
bull, and Lemuel Hopkins were the members of this brilliant 
group, who made Connecticut in general and Hartford in 
particular the chief centre of American letters at that time. 
Boston, with its environs, had occupied that position once 
upon a time, and it was destined to recover it later. But 
there have been periods in the history of Boston, and its 
environs, in which, in the words of a modern wit of New 
York, it has assumed the character of an abandoned literary 
farm, sinking to the condition which Cotton Mather says 
had once justified the soubriquet of Lost-town. It was Lost- 
town again in the days of the Revolution. Creative litera- 
ture, such as it was, came from New Haven. 

In the New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine 
for October 26, 1786, there appeared the first installment of 
a poem, the joint production of all the Hartford wits, 



18 T\^^ AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

entitled "The Anarchiad" — "Bolsheviad" might be its name 
today. The authors professed to have discovered an ancient 
epic poem, antedating both Homer and Virgil, which con- 
tained in the manner of the sixth Aeneid, a panorama of 
future history, with particular reference to the period in 
American history immediately following the Revolution. 
They restored the text by means of a "chemic prepara- 
tion," and proclaimed it "the model for all subsequent epic 
productions," and promised "perhaps, in a future essay," 
to prove that Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope had "bor- 
rowed many of their capital beauties from it." I think that 
Pope would have applauded the ingenuity of the idea, the 
general excellence of their verse and their imitation, and its 
parody of his own. Subscribers to the New Haven Gazette 
must have turned first of all in each new number to the 
latest deciphered fragment of the Anarchiad. Some inno- 
cent readers actually took it for Gospel truth. The succes- 
sive productions were republished in a convenient little book 
by Luther G. Riggs at New Haven in 1861. He remarks 
that many of its passages are "peculiarly adapted to the 
exigencies of the present time" ; they fit this moment, too. 
Perhaps the most striking feature of this work, as I have 
already indicated, is its mastery of urbane Horatian ridicule, 
sometimes more sharply pointed in the manner of Mr. Pope. 
Through all this time when many heads were hot and some 
were lost, our Hartford wits cherish the golden mean and 
what I may perhaps call Yale indifference. Their light 
shines calmly in those murky days, like that of Punch 
through the recent war. If the votaries of the Comic Spirit 
keep the faith, no fury of uncreating Dullness can bring 
humanity, as it brought the German Empire, into utter void. 
And the Comic Spirit will not suffer us to eternize our 
enmities, to link our cause forever with that of the angels 
and that of our adversary forever with that of the adversary 
of all mankind. Memories of the bitter struggle were still 
keen when our authors, ridiculing the issue of paper money 
in one of the best of their parodies, could pay this tribute, 
seasoned, to be sure, with a pinch of satire, in honor of their 
recent foe: 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 19 

"Lo, the poor Briton, who, corrupted, sold, 

Sees God in courts, or hears him chink in gold ; 

Whose soul, proud empire oft has taught to stray 

Far as the Western World, and gates of day ; 

Though plagu'd with debts, with rage of conquest curst. 

In rags and tender-acts he puts no trust ; 

But in the public weal his own forgets, 

Finds heaven for him who pays the nation's debts ; 

A heaven like London his fond fancy makes, 

Of nectar'd porter and ambrosial steaks." 

There is another flavor than that of satire in the closing 
couplet — an ill-concealed hankering for the coffee-house, in 
which our Hartford wits deserved a comfortable settle and 
a brimming tankard. These true Americans, though the 
bitterness of the war was still fresh, felt deep at heart the 
strength of their actual lineage. Surely if sedition had 
broken out in any part of Britain, they would not have fos- 
tered it by welcoming its envoys or raising subscriptions in 
its behalf. For all this, they were not Tories. They are the 
conservatives and aristocrats of the new American civiliza- 
tion, opposed equally to what they call the "giddy rage of 
democratic states," where are 

"All souls reduc'd that e'er presum'd to shine. 
To one just level," 

and they condemn no less those "years of darkness," whence 

"springs the regal line — 
Hereditary kings, by right divine." 

They were members of the Order of the Cincinnati, formed 
of the officers who had served in the Revolutionary War and 
sharply criticized both at home and abroad as a breeder of 
caste and hereditary knighthood — an imaginary danger, in 
the opinion of our poets, and at all events less serious than 
some that threaten the American Legion today. In short, 
these Hartford wits are Federalists, and Alexander Hamil- 
ton is their prophet. Our culture would be richer, more 
varied and more liberal had their party preserved its lineage 
to the present time. 



iW 



20 TW^AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

Amid the turmoil of dissension and distress with which 
the States were rife, it was no Hght task that faced the 
Constitutional Convention that assembled at Philadelphia in 
Independence Hall on the twenty-fifth of May, 1787. Yet 
there were giants in those days, strong men of ideas who, 
like true humanists in all periods of history, planned for 
the future by a study of the past. We must never forget 
that the founders of our American republic were men who 
venerated the Classics of Greece and Rome, who turned to 
antiquity no less than to modern France for guidance, and 
who conceived that their work, while embodying the new, 
kept faith with the best in tradition. The guiding intelli- 
gences of the convention were James Madison, Alexander 
Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris ; of scarcely less note 
were Robert Morris, James Wilson, George Mason, and 
Roger Sherman. The political sagacity shown by these our 
forefathers makes one of the most lustrous pages in our 
history ; taught by their studies of the past, they knew that 
an essential part of strength was the art of compromise. 
President Wilson, in his history of our country, declares that 
the convention drafted nothing less than a new constitution — 
no mere amendment or series of amendments to the Articles 
of Confederation, but a "radically new scheme of govern- 
ment and of union, which must stand or fall upon its own 
merits." Much of the strength of the appeal, I doubt not. 
was due to the insistence on the novel character of the plan. 
Madison was careful to point out that the term "national" 
was used not in contradistinction to a limited, but to a fed- 
eral, goverment. It did not imply a consolidation of the 
individual governments ; in short, it was a "new and unique" 
system that appropriated the good features of centralization 
without encroaching on State rights. As a matter of fact, 
the State governments were bound, as time went on, to 
become more and more secondary. Says Professor Chan- 
ning: "It is safe to say that had this outcome been antici- 
pated, had the state legislatures foreseen that the movement, 
in which they were asked to take part, would end in the loss 
of state sovereignty, and the establishment of a government 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 21 

federal only in name, not one State would have accepted the 
invitation of Congress and appointed delegates." And Sen- 
ator Lodge states, in his Life of Daniel Webster, that in 
1788, "not a man in the country regarded the new system as 
anything but an experiment — from which each and every 
State had the right peaceably to withdraw." This statement 
has not been universally conceded by historians, but Senator 
Lodge has at least made it indisputably clear that our fore- 
fathers were willing to undertake an exceedingly novel 
political experiment, an exceedingly wide divagation from 
their ancestral ways. They felt, to quote Mr. Lodge's later, 
though not his latest, words, in his discussion of a League 
to Enforce Peace, that "it is through the aspiration for per- 
fection, through the search for Utopias, that the real ad- 
vances have been made." During the Convention, Washing- 
ton adhered firmly, through all the discouragements, to his 
Utopian dream. "It is too probable," he admitted, "that no 
plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful 
conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer 
what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards de- 
fend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise 
and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." I 
can well believe that these words may have cheered the heart 
of President Wilson in moments that would dispirit a more 
flexible mind. 

But the delegates at Philadelphia were sagacious in their 
mode of presentation. They did not hand out to the dift'er- 
ent States a sort of Westminster Confession, immutable and 
indispensable for their^ salvation, with a direction to "Sign' 
here" and not to tear out the heart of the document by 
tinkering with its clauses ; rather, they invited them in a 
large and general way to partake of a unique political ven- 
ture, in which they had nothing to lose and everything to 
gain. They admitted the imperfections of their plan. Wash- 
ington wrote after the event to Patrick Henry : "I wish the 
Constitution, which is offered, had been more perfect ; but 
I sincerely believe it is the best that could be obtained at this 
time, and as a constitutional door is opened for amendments 



22 T\^A]VIERICAN RETROSPECTS 

hereafter, the adoption of it under the present circumstances 
of the Union, is, in my opinion, desirable." 

Such was the modesty of the greatest American and such 
his wisdom. The late Cecil Chesterton, brother of the better 
known Gilbert Chesterton and quite his peer in acute ob- 
servation and trenchant phrase, hit the truth when he re- 
marked in his history of our country, that the framers of 
the Constitution "made an alliance and hoped it would grow 
into a nation." Such was the strategy and such the result. 
Only three years after the adoption of the Constitution, 
Alexander Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury under 
the first President, proposed and, despite opposition, carried 
through, a measure which if brought forward when the 
Constitution was submitted to the States, would have 
wrecked the whole plan of union ; I mean the consolidation 
of the State debts in one national debt. One thing at a time. 
Of Hamilton, President Wilson says, with a courtesy that 
comes well from a Jeffersonian, "that he was above all a 
statesman, and contented himself, and that right heartily, 
with the minimum of what he desired — with the government 
that the convention desired. He knew by how delicate and 
difficult a series of compromises the Constitution as it stood 
had been obtained amidst a conflict of interests and of 
views disclosed in debate. A compromise had ended every 
serious divergence of opinion." Would that this admirable 
definition of a statesman as one who understands the art of 
compromise commanded universal acceptance at this mo- 
ment ! Alas, it is sometimes easier to hold up the mirror of 
history for the gaze of our contemporaries than to look 
therein ourselves. 

Statesmanlike as the new document was, it by no means 
won immediate approval. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, 
almost anticipating the words of Senator Lodge, thought 
that such a "compleat consolidating plan" deserved to be 
"carefully considered by every American," because if it 
proved to be impracticable, its adoption would be a fatal 
error. Patrick Henry came out with a new demand for 
liberty or death, only that the instrument of death now 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 23 

seemed to be the proposed constitution. "That this is a 
consolidated government," he declared, "is demonstrably 
clear ; and the danger of such a government is, to my mind, 
very striking. What right had they to say. We, the people? 
Who authorized them to speak the language of. We, the 
people, instead of, We, the States? States are the character- 
istics and the soul of a confederation. If the States be not 
the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consoli- 
dated, national government of the people of all the States." 
Patrick Henry's analysis was correct, but the outcome does 
not impress us today as particularly alarming. Henry was 
not the only protestant. Samuel Adams in Massachusetts 
and George Clinton in New York were quite as emphatic in 
their opposition. Indeed, President Wilson, who, so far as 
I have observed, nowhere brands these opponents as traitors, 
believes that "could there have been a counting of heads the 
country through, a majority would have been found opposed 
to the Constitution." Sometimes a plebiscite is a dangerous 
thing. 

No wonder, therefore, that though the Constitution had 
been perfected in the short space of four months, being 
signed by the delegates on September 17, 1787, it took some 
time for the States to ratify. Most of the smaller ones were 
quick to "come under the New Roof," as the phrase went, 
but the interests of the larger States demanded more con- 
sideration. Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey rati- 
fied towards the end of the year, with Georgia and Connecti- 
cut close behind them. Massachusetts agreed, but only 
with the understanding that certain amendments should be 
made as soon as practicable. That was the attitude like- 
wise of Virginia, North and South Carolina, New York 
and New Hampshire. These amendments, which had been 
virtually guaranteed by the representatives in the conven- 
tion, constituted a sort of bill of rights, and, remarks Presi- 
dent Wilson, had they not been accepted, "the opposition 
would have prevailed." They appear as Amendments 1 to 
10 in the Constitution of the U. S. A., and their purpose, 
as defined by President Wilson, was to safeguard explicitly 



24 T^^ AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 

the more essential riglits of individuals and of States. They 
are apparently no great obstacle today to a firmly knit 
American nationality. With the assent of New Hampshire, 
that of New York, thus placed between two large com- 
munities that had accepted, became inevitable, and Virginia 
reasoned in like manner. North Carolina jumped aboard 
after the inauguration of President Washington in 1789, 
and little Rhode Island, with the same spirit of independence 
that she is showing perhaps more justifiably today, was the 
last to ratify, on May 29. 1790. Like Virgil's bees, that 
sturdy community 

"Carries large courage in a tiny breast." 

In the fragment of the Anarchiad that appeared in the 
Gazette for May 24, 1787, the day before the Convention 
opened, these verses occur ; the speaker is Hesper, spirit of 
the Western World : 

"When splendid victory, on her trophy'd car 

Swept from these shores the last remains of war — 

Bade each glad State that boasts Columbia's name. 

Exult in freedom and ascend to fame ; 

To bliss unbounded stretch their ardent eyes. 

And wealth and empire from their labor rise — 

My raptur'd sons beheld the discord cease. 

And sooth'd their sorrows in the songs of peace. 

Shall these bright scenes, with happiest omens born, 

Fade like the fleeting visions of the morn ? 

Shall this fair fabric from its base be hurl'd. 

And whelm in dust the glories of the world ? 

Will ye, who saw the heavens tempestuous lower — 

Who felt the arm of irritated power — 

Whose souls, descending with the wasting flood, 

Prepar'd the firm foundations, built in blood ; 

By discord seiz'd, will ye desert the plan — 

Th' unfinish'd Babel of the bliss of man? 



TWO AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 25 

Ere death invades, and night's deep curtain falls, 
Through ruined realms the voice of Union calls ; 

On you she calls ! attend the warning cry : 
'ye live united, or divided die!' " 

This call was heard, and the people of discordant States 
were joined in one nation. Union did not usher in the 
millenium, which has not yet arrived. Why should it come ? 
It is the period that may be perpetually defined as that 
which lies a thousand years ahead of any given moment ; as 
such, may it ever inspire humanity to higher hopes and 
deeds. Our country today is seething as of yore with new 
forms of the frailties with which we are so easily beset. 
But some of the wrongs and the fears that stalked abroad in 
the dark years following the Revolution have long since been 
laid. 

I will return^ in closing, to our anonymous chronicler of 
our ancestors' war. Looking back from the year 1793 on 
that not distant past, he writes with a cheerful tranquillity, 
as though its dangers had been surmounted, and its gains 
conserved. "The smiles of Heaven on the American Revo- 
lution," he declares, "must be confessed by all who have 
paid attention to the events. The following have been noticed 
as remarkable : The fewness of apostasies in the capital 
characters ; the fewness of desertions to the enemy ; the 
sailors taken in the American service have preferred the 
horrors of prison-ship to fighting against the country who 
had employed them ; men of every rank have generally felt 
and spoke alike, as if the chords of life struck unison through 
the continent." 

So then, after the intervening years of discord and dis- 
illusion, the vision had returned. It is therefore too soon 
for us to despair. As history repeats herself for us at this 
moment, bringing the old question in an issue of still greater 
scope, we may turn for encouragement to those earlier days 
of retrospect. We may, like our ancestors, rise above the 
"prevailing sentiment of a miserable indifference in regard 
to all things" mf^rnational. We mav still cherish the great 



26 T^M) AMERICAN RETROSPECTS 



:^ 



ideal and anticipate the coming again of those gohlen days 
when hearts were united and hopes ran high, and when the 
triumph over injustice in a splendid war seemed but the 
precursor to a yet more splendid era when the need of war 
should have ceased to plague our poor humanity. And if 
we would steer our course by undefiled American ideals, if 
we would keep the faith of our fathers and truly venerate 
the Constitution on which our American commonwealth is 
built, we shall consider not merely the letter of that great 
document itself, but even more attentively the aims and 
spirit of the men who framed it. For it is the letter that 
killeth, but the spirit that giveth life. Thus we may listen 
again to the voice of our country calling from the past and 
uniting in the old appeal with new voices from across the 
sea: 

"On you she calls ! attend the warning cry : 

'Ye live united, or divided die !' " 



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